Sunday, October 21, 2012

Liberating British Columbia

John reports from the Great Grey North:

What a mega day of outreach here in Vancouver! After the talk on Wednesday night about the importance of leafleting, several offered to join me for today's outreach! To say this was a big day would be an understatement -- with the help of three of the five board members of Liberation BC, as well as Rebecca (the two-week vegan that I had leafleted on Tuesday and offered to help), and Aaron (a member of the student animal rights group), we distributed over 4,200 Even If You Like Meat booklets to students, as well as 56 Guides to current or soon-to-be vegheads. This is the new all-time record for most amount of booklets given out at a college campus in Canada.

Aside from the tons of great reception we got from the UBC students, the highlight of the day was a conversation I had with an animal-loving woman walking her dog. She told me how she's weened her husband and kids onto eating "nothing that suckles" so I explained to her how if we care about animal suffering, we're unfortunately eating many more animals by switching to chicken and fish. I also briefly described fish farming and she seemed to be very moved by the short bits of info I discussed with her. I could tell she had a very gentle heart and I think she really took what I said seriously and I'm glad she's now armed with this knowledge.

Rebecca Smith enlightens more students.

The leafleting gods shone their light on us today -- the forecast called for rain (not surprising as it is basically always rains here at this time of the year) and it never rained! Quite an amazing feat. If you were here the last two weeks you'd understand what I mean. So, so happy the rain didn't pour down as that would've been a real bummer.

Aside from the large numbers, the great response, and the activity of new volunteers, the real victory was the fact that many of the members of Liberation BC seems to be quite excited about the prospects of engaging in this kind of outreach on a regular basis -- the talk seemed to rally them and the good day of leafleting really seemed to reinforce this. I'm really excited to follow the work that this active, intelligent group will be doing in the future!

Sophia Middleton makes the animals' case while Roger Clark looks for the next student.